


Coming Back

by mightbeanasshole



Series: Immortal Outlaws [2]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Angst, Immortals, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 21:59:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3994423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightbeanasshole/pseuds/mightbeanasshole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to "Carlsbad, 1990" -- Ray and Geoff lose more than they gain through their union.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Back

Ray does make it hurt, in the end.

Ray knows from too much practice how to control the flow of blood from animal or man--how to grant someone a clean death or how to wring out every ounce of suffering until the thing that dies goes away whimpering and shuddering, no hope of being spared, all gods forsaken.

Catharsis. That is what Ray grants Geoff, the first time.

\---

Ray doesn’t want him coming back in a room reeking of Geoff’s own blood and fear. But he’s promised to protect the younger man--so Ray leaves the corpse just a moment to go to the hub of his property, a room hot with machines and monitors. He locks the property down, mechanics all around coming to life as they’re armed remotely.

Ray returns, then, and he begins to clean up.

\---

The first time, Geoff comes back to the sensation of Ray holding a rough plastic cup to his lips. Strong, hot wine floods his mouth and he tries to swallow, coughing.

“ _Merum_ ,” his friend says, soothing, calling him by one of his old names like a lullaby. “You’re back.”

\---

As life dawns again in Geoff’s body, every element of the man looks refined. His skin looks polished and golden--at least where it shows between the black and gray designs. The bags pressed like bruises in the hollows of his eye sockets are gone. His hair is softer. Even his eyes--when Geoff finally opens them--are bluer.

“That the sex or the death that does that for you?” Ray asks, turning Ramsey’s hand over in his own.

“If I say death, that mean you’re gonna want to try it out for yourself?”

Ray smirks at him, shakes his head.

“Just curious,” Ray says.

“It’s the sex,” Geoff says. “Sorry I can’t return the favor.”

“You implying I don’t look my best always?” Ray asks, slinging him a look, and the other man laughs softly.

“Not a bit,” Geoff says. “Not at all.”

“But nah, I know,” Ray says. “Different things hit us all differently.”

Ray tries not to wonder what it’s like when Ramsey is with a mortal. Did he glow like this afterwards? It was almost a bit obnoxious--as if the man weren’t full of himself normally without looking this way.

“Well in the big cosmic gift-giving session, I do wish I’d gotten the skills with chemistry you got instead,” Ramsey says--and Ray realizes that the man has been watching him as he drifted. A buried memory surfaces in Ray’s mind.

“You’ll need something again soon, won’t you?” Ray asks. It hadn’t even occurred to Ray that Ramsey would eventually need to put Ray’s brand of talent to use again until now.

“I’ll need something again--but not soon,” Geoff says. Ray watches him do a calculation in his head. “Got almost… hell, close to 30 years.”

“Christ, I missed it by a mile,” Ray says. “You know me and calendars.”

Geoff nods, smiling.

“You think they’re even born yet, Ramsey?” Ray asks. “They’re usually pretty young, right?”

The expression on Geoff’s face turns and goes sharp.

The change reminds Ray of the way a line of clouds darkened and gained order before pinching and pushing a tornado down to scour the earth.

Ray doesn’t have a chance to say he’s sorry before Ramsey is pushing himself up and striding out of the room. A moment later, Ray hears the cap twist off the bottle of whiskey in the kitchen.

\---

Ray expects Geoff to leave that night, but he doesn’t. The sun sets as Ramsey sits on the ragged paisley couch in Ray’s livingroom, chewing a cuticle on one of those dark hands.

“Staying the night?”

“If I may,” Geoff says, a question in his eyes. Ray settles down on the floor to look up at him.

He’s put the same t-shirt back on that he wore in. How long has he been on the road? Camping, probably. Even with the changes, it’s obvious the man is weary. Ray’s fear from before--his hesitation and even resentment--feel far from him now.

“As long as you want,” Ray says.

“You know that’s not true,” Ramsey says with a look in his eyes like a warning. “I’d stay forever Ray.”

It’s a conversation Ray doesn’t want to rehash.

“How long, then?” Ray asks.

“A few nights,” Geoff offers. “We’ll try.”

\---

Ray measures the time that passes by the inches of whiskey that disappear from the first bottle. And then the second, third, fourth. Ray loses count. Geoff takes his motorcycle 14 miles down the road once a day, coming back from the nearest town, producing groceries and liquor and expensive bottles of wine from the leather satchels attached to his bike.

The wine seems at first too good to be true, far too nice to be sitting on the shelves at the ShopMart down the highway.

When Ray points it out, Ramsey just smiles wide.

“Prestidigitation, old man,” Ramsey chuckles.

And though Geoff is good for a variety of things indeed, his relationship with wine is outstanding.

\---

Geoff measures the time that passes in the pieces of Ray that go missing: his vigilant patrol of the borders of his property; the nervous shake of his leg when they spoke about the past; his English going foggy, Ray lapsing into the old tongue when exhaustion and sleep creep into his head.

\---

They only use the knives seriously one more time because the cleanup is so brutal--but the set stays in Ray’s room, cleaned and replaced in their suede wrap. Geoff has a habit of playing with the things as he thinks, and Ray finds him that evening sprawled in his underwear, staring at the ceiling and turning one in his fingers. Ray kicks off his shoes and crawls onto the bed, laying on his belly. Geoff hums to acknowledge him, not taking his eyes off the ceiling.

“You _look_ a bit like damascus steel, Ramsey,” Ray says, finally, tracing the outline of an hourglass tattooed on Geoff’s thigh. “All these patterns on patterns. I never asked you why you started.”

“Because they come back,” Geoff says without hesitation.

“What do you mean?”

Geoff chuckles. Ray hadn’t gone through the cycle of death and regeneration as much as Geoff had. Maybe the older man was losing his memory of what it was like.

“Tattoos come back with everything else,” Geoff says. “Your eyelashes and your haircut and your fingernails. They come right back.”

Ray nods, the understanding dawning on him. Geoff clenches and unclenches his fist.

“They prove I--I’m real,” Geoff says. “That I’m really me.”

“ _Merum_ …”

“Don’t--” Geoff warns.

“They make you stand out,” Ray says, trying not to scold him for something he can’t change now.  

“I know,” Geoff says. “Never pretended like it was a good idea.”

“No,” Ray says, allowing his hand to come to rest across Geoff’s belly. “You’re not in the habit of making good decisions.”

In one quick movement, Geoff drops the knife and takes Ray hard by the wrist. He pulls Ray up, wrenching his arm as Ray tries to follow the limb, dragging Ray into a kiss, dragging his torso to rest across Geoff’s chest. They war for a moment until Ray stills into the kiss, lets the momentum pull him.

“ _You’ll be mine tonight?_ ” Geoff asks in their old language.

“ _As long as you want_ ,” Ray says--and at the fall in Ramsey’s eyes, he corrects himself. “ _As long as I can, yes._ ”

And although Ray has taken the younger man each time so far--and then, twice, taken his life--it is clear that Geoff wants more now as he kisses and growls into Ray. They rock and grind and time begins to move as if it has an inconsistent texture, Ray on a current independent of his own body, the centuries lifting out of Ray’s chest as he finds himself on his back with bruising fingertips dug into his hips, Geoff’s eyes piercing, boring into his own.

“With me?” Geoff asks in English. He’s out of breath. They both are, Ray realizes.

“With you,” Ray says, nodding. His hips are up off the bed, Ramsey hot and hard and half in him, and abruptly Ray realizes he has no recollection of how they got here. He doesn’t know how long they’ve been at it but he’s so tight around Geoff’s length as the man sinks into him now it can’t have been long. He shuts his eyes against the discomfort, against the questioning look his friend gives him.

“Ray,” Geoff says, his voice wet with worry now as he stills. The friction stops and Ray feels like his lungs are filled with sand, like he can’t do anything but this.

“Please,” he begs. “Please don’t stop.”

Geoff gives a shuddering sigh at the words, his eyebrows knitting as he sinks himself again--slowly, cautiously.

“Please,” Ray says again--not sure what he’s asking for, his hands weak at Ramsey’s hips as he tries to buck, to move against him. “Please, Geoff.”

He doesn’t stop begging until Geoff is fucking into him in earnest, breathing hard and sweating, the room filling with the sounds of the bed, their coupling, both of them moaning with the exertion, with the spiraling bursts of pleasure that each stroke brings.

It fills up Ray’s world, erases every word of every language he’s ever known until all he can babble out is “Geoff, Geoff, Geoff,” until he’s forgotten his own name and the way the buttes look at sunset and the code for his door locks and all that is left is pleasure and release and null as he spills hot streams across his own chest.

\---

Ray follows Geoff around the property as the man finds things to tinker with. Ray has probably got other things he should be doing but he can’t recall any of them right now--can’t seem to find his notes--or perhaps he hasn’t started looking for them yet. Ray is drawn to Geoff like the man is now exerting his own gravity. He is content to follow Geoff.

Geoff’s tattooed hands seem to touch and improve everything around Ray, from the mechanical gates to the off-roader that Ray had pieced together a decade ago. Geoff’s touch seems to improve Ray himself, too--Ray who can’t remember feeling so alive. He can remember so much more, now. Memories that feel like dreams are now in sharp relief in his mind. He whistles a song he learned 2,000 years ago and wonders if Ramsey’s ever heard it.

It feels good to spend time with someone. It’s been a long time since Ray allowed himself a companion, and Ramsey has never stayed so long before.

Had he been here three days? Four?

Time passes erratically. Everything seems brighter, like the painted desert come alive in the dust around Ray’s doublewide.

Ray finds himself watching the sunset from the roof of his trailer with a cup of red wine, the tin surface hot through the fabric of his pants. He can’t remember how he got there, but Ramsey is somewhere in the house below. Ray can _feel_ Geoff now.

His eyes are drawn to a movement on the horizon. Something is swarming, swirling like a vortex--dark shapes. Ray tries to focus his eyes on them, takes a draw off the wine.

Bats.

A huge swarm of bats.

He begins to pound on the tin roof.

“Ramsey!” he shouts, laughing, delighted. “Geoff! Come out and see this! Geoff!”

He continues to pound, and finally Geoff emerges and walks out so he can see Ray.

“What’s going on?” Geoff asks, his voice on the edge of panic.

“Bats, look,” Ray shouts, pointing at the horizon.

Geoff appears confused--turning to peer at Ray, then back at the horizon, then back at his friend.

“What about them?” Geoff asks, finally.

“God, just look at all of them,” Ray says. “Where did they come from?”

Geoff isn’t looking at the swarm anymore, the dance of shapes across fields of indigo as the sunlight dies. He’s looking up to Ray.

“The caverns, Ray,” he says, sounding immensely sad.

He says more, but Ray can’t hear him. God, they look incredible. How many could there be?

\---

Ray doesn’t notice, when he comes back inside, that Geoff has quietly gathered his things and packed them back into the leather satchel that straps to his motorcycle.

Ray doesn’t notice that Geoff can’t look him in the eye.

Geoff’s friend is gone. Ray has been blurred and wiped and scoured until the thing looking adoringly at Geoff is the same featureless thing Geoff has faced for centuries, masquerading as his friend. It makes him sick. He’ll leave in the morning--it was always less upsetting for them that way. Slip out while it’s quiet, while they’re half asleep--or better yet before they’ve woken up.

He’s cooked them dinner while Ray occupied himself on the roof, watching the same bat colony that had passed on the horizon every day of the summer for the past forty summers Ray has lived here. But when Ray comes back inside, he isn’t interested in dinner. His hands are on Geoff--pushing him, cajoling him, caressing him, pulling him towards Ray’s bedroom.

Geoff traces Ray’s jaw with a careful hand.

“Easy,” he says softly. Geoff thinks of the vast desert, he thinks of the bone-tired feeling after swimming in the sunshine, he thinks of the quiet stillness of a first snow, and he pushes these thoughts towards Ray. “Easy,” he repeats, like you would to an unbroken mare. Ray leans into the touch, closing his eyes.

When he opens them, there’s more focus there. The pupils aren’t blown wide.

“There you are,” Geoff says, smiling because he knows Ray needs it. “Are you hungry?”

“Yeah,” Ray says. “That smells amazing.”

\---

When they do retire to bed that night, it is a slow negotiation.

Geoff knows sleep won’t come. He is thinking about his exit. Ray is pathetic and babbling into his ear.

He cannot find solace or even a passing pleasure with Ray anymore. In another lifetime, maybe, he still could’ve rutted into his friend. Not tonight. Geoff can still see the swirl of bats behind his eyelids. Ray grinds an erection into his thigh. It goes unanswered by Geoff’s body, and he is arrested by something beyond loathing, beyond despair. The dice of the gods are always loaded. He should’ve left that first day. After that, it was all diminishing returns. Why couldn’t he just have left after he’d gotten what he’d needed?

Ray is almost fevered now and his begging makes less sense. He asks Geoff to cut him up, to send him home. In another language, he speaks about Pella, asks about the ox-head. Some sentences are in a language Geoff doesn’t know at all, but from his friend’s sing-song tone he can guess that he’s reciting a long-remembered poem.  

Geoff holds him down, undresses him tenderly, before slicking a hand and snaking it between the two of them. Ray can barely be pried off of him at first, but after a few soothing touches, the older man is relaxing backwards and going pliant under Geoff’s touch.

It doesn’t take long to grant Ray release. That much, at least, is a blessing. Ray falls into a heavy sleep.

Geoff swabs the other man off before pulling off his own clothes and folding them.

Geoff feels nothing now.

He pulls a grayed sheet over Ray before taking his own place in bed. Neither of their minds are present as Geoff holds the smaller man against his chest.

\---

Geoff does not make the clean break he’d hoped for. Ray wakes up at Geoff’s first movement the next morning.

“Going to make breakfast?” Ray asks. He sounds… clear.

“No,” Geoff says. He’s pulling on his jeans.

“Geoff,” Ray says, caution in his voice. He looks up with eyes that are his own. _It’s not right,_ Geoff thinks. _Just leave--this isn’t right._

“Please,” Geoff says. He pulls on his shirt.

“You can’t just do this,” Ray says. “You can’t leave me now.”

“Please let me go,” Geoff begs.

“Geoff--” Ray’s voice breaks and his hands are frantic across Geoff’s shoulders.

“It’s not you,” Geoff says, firm. “It’s not you.”

“It is,” Ray says. “Of course it’s me--I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” Geoff says. He rises from the bed and Ray follows him, the touches changing abruptly, and Geoff feels a tanned forearm aggressive against one side of his neck. His instincts take over before Ray can catch him in the choke and he spins, pressing his own forearm under Ray’s chin as he pins the smaller man against the bed.

Ray struggles, gasping. Geoff lets him gasp, sinking enough pressure to compress the artery with his arm. A gentle choke, really. A blood choke. It only takes a handful of seconds.

“ _I made a mistake,_ ” Geoff says in their oldest language. “ _I am so sorry, Ray. You were my sanctuary. You deserve more._ ”

Ray can’t hear him. He’s out--not dead.

Geoff gathers his things to leave.

\---

When Ray wakes alone, he can no longer feel Geoff. There’s a throb of panic. His friend is getting away. Naked, Ray bounds to his door. Ramsey is nowhere outside--not even betrayed by the distant thunder of a motorcycle. But he’s left a clear track in the earth. Ray will find him.

It takes him less than a minute to pull on shorts, sandals, to jog to the four-wheeler that Geoff had improved just a day ago. Or had it been a week?

The key is still in the ignition and Ray’s heart seems to be chanting “Geoff, Geoff” with every beat--but a turn of the key does nothing. Ray drops out of the vehicle, and below the dashboard there is a mess of wires. Ramsey had disabled it before taking off. Damn him.

Ray jogs, then, leaving his gates unlocked when he comes to the border, passing off of his own property and into the desert on foot.

When a jog has his lungs raw and his feet blistered, Ray slows to a walk.

Ray loses the track but keeps walking. An hour? Maybe more.

\---

It’s impossible to tell how long he’s been gone, and when Ray returns to his home, locking the gate behind him, he realizes he doesn’t even have a calendar, can’t even track with some objective measure how long Geoff had been there. It felt like a lifetime--but things often do to Ray.

He finds himself broken, waiting, again in Ramsey’s wake.

It had been a mistake to let Ramsey in. The betrayal was in his blood.

 


End file.
